First Sunday in September
by gibbsheroic27
Summary: William Munro was a good copper once upon a time, a fact which Charlie Davis is painfully well aware of.


A/N: I own nothing. Warning for some gore and amputation.

"I expected better from you Charlie."

The words seem to freeze in his chest, curling around the edges of something deep and warm he hadn't thought about in years. "Doc…"

Blake's thrown out hand swats dismissively at nothing but air, but Charlie could swear he hears a crack loud enough to ring in his ears far longer than the fade out of Blake's abruptly retreating footsteps.

The phone rings seconds into Charlie's aborted attempt to chase after the Doc. He made it precisely three feet from the edge of his own desk. He wishes it took him longer to decide to answer it.

Lawson's voice sounds warmer than Charlie remembers it really being, the gruff "Davis" reverberating into his ear with a warmth evident all the way from Melbourne.

Charlie squeezes the phone hard enough he's genuinely surprised to discover when he replaces the receiver after the most monosyllable conversation of his life that the black surface is completely free of cracks.

CD

"Daddy, daddy, daddy, look what I made you!" Toddler small footsteps echo across dirty floors, pounding heedlessly down three short steps, faltering for a second before resuming their mad spillage towards the base of the stairs. Small arms thrust a rather crushed something determinedly forward, intent on their target of slack work shirt covered arms.

Charlie watches from the top of the flat steps, watches his little sister proudly show their father the something she spent all of Sunday working on diligently at their kitchen table, the longest his sister's spent in one place in as long as Charlie can remember. He watches as their newly demobbed father stares at the little girl and her greenish-blue something as if they were a foreign object he couldn't quite identify.

He watches the slightly glossy greenish-blue something melt into pulpy greyness in the edge of the gutter, swept into nothingness by the rain gusting in time to his sister's gusty sobs drenching the front of his good jumper more thoroughly than the rainstorm outside the grimy windowsill they are perched on.

If he squints, he can almost make out the edges of his father's hands cupping a cigarette against the rain, carefully nurturing the tiny glowing flame as if it was the most precious thing in the world.

CD

Charlie doesn't go back to Blake's that night. He sets out with every intention of going home, but the trouble is, he isn't entirely sure where that is anymore. It's hardly the first night he's spent in his car in his life, thus his appearance the next morning is artfully not-quite rumpled.

It's enough to almost make him cry that Munro of all people notices anyway. That only Munro notices.

Blake comes in precisely at eight, like always. He greets Charlie with a perfunctory politeness he's only really heard directed at the Tyneman's before. He doesn't ask where Charlie was.

Charlie pretends to choke on his second cup of tea, coughing hard enough to provide a genuine excuse for the tears that have been threatening since Blake started looking at him blandly. Blake, who never looks blandly at anyone. At anything.

He looks up to find Blake is nowhere to be seen.

CD

Charlie gets his first job at thirteen, brings home his first paycheck to his mother on tired and proudly blistered feet, fresh from running errands until his legs forgot how to ache.

Her smile is better than any salve in the world. It does little to make up for his father's silence.

CD

Hobart caught Charlie's wrist in a vice like grip, squeezing his wrist bones together painfully for rather longer than necessary in Charlie's opinion. Munro flicks a dispassionate glance over the movement, before refocusing his eyes on Charlie. It's rather like being regarded by a snake with a remarkably flat affect.

There's nothing remotely mesmerizing about Munro, never has been, but Charlie feels the first stirring of strong emotion towards the man he's ever mustered up, all the weeks of harried cases and snatched phones calls coalescing into something he suspects is rather close to genuine loathing.

"You will not tell Blake anything about this, is that understood Davis?" Yeah, there's nothing close about it. Definitely loathing.

"I said is that clear Sergeant?" Charlie rips his gaze away from Munro's reptilian menace to gaze morosely at the stack of neatly tied letters tapping slowly against his typewriter bar, moving with marionette precision in Munro's cold clutches. Charlie knows absolutely nothing about Chinese script, but he would recognize that hand anywhere.

"Davis!" Charlie feels tears press persistently against his eyeballs, echoes of school yard jeers meeting his ears, nothing to the sound of a high pitched scream ripping into his retreating back "Coward!"

"It's clear, Sir." He doesn't sound remotely choked up. He isn't proud of it.

"Good." Munro somehow manages to sound nothing so much as bored as he turns on his heel sharply and marches away, Blake's letters secure hostages in his cold clutches.

Charlie yanks his arm from Hobart's grip hard enough the make the other man stumble. He's a bit proud of that.

It takes him a day and a half to tell Blake. That hurts worse than the burning brick shaped bruises littering his back.

CD

Charlie uses his first official, real, grown up paycheck to buy his father a simple, sturdy flask. It is unadorned, a simple, crudely etched message scratching subtly across the miniscule screw on cap.

Charlie's father walks out of their lives the last week of August. He never comes back. Charlie is sixteen.

The flask sits on the mantle gathering dust until is somehow finds its way into Charlie's bag, carefully wrapped in plain red linen, as he finds it when he unpacks on his first night in Melbourne.

It has been polished.

CD

For all the man's many faults, Charlie has never considered Munro to be an incompetent copper per say. In fact, the man is normally so meticulous that what happened, in retrospect, was very unlikely to be by anything less than by design.

Charlie's not sure what it says about a man when it's more plausible to suspect him of attempted murder than incompetence, but whatever it does say is surprisingly flattering. And if Charlie was less practical, he'd be worried about a world where being stupid was more reprehensible than being corrupt.

If Charlie was less practical, he would have wondered why exactly Munro told him to take point on their takedown of Ballarat's surprisingly thriving drug cartel headquarters, less than a week after he started eyeing Charlie like he expected him to start wearing "Blake is my doctor" buttons on his police blazer.

If Charlie was less practical, less worried about everything, more in the moment, he might have noticed the truly lizard like quality Munro's eyes take on moment as he calmly issues orders to the assembled officers, and why didn't he question why there were so few of them in the first place?

"Davis, take point." Charlie remembers that his head jerked up fast enough to leave a bruise where his temple impacted with the car door. He doesn't take the time to rub the spot before obeying silently. His non-existent nod of acknowledgement feels like the brazennest act of rebellion he's ever attempted.

Munro doesn't seem to notice.

Charlie is shot less than ten seconds after entering the warehouse. It takes him at least thirty more to drag himself behind a rusty hunk of metal that might have been a tractor in a previous life, forty-five to return fire awkwardly with his left hand, his right hanging useless in a strangely numb and slick hunk.

It's still a further minute before backup flows in to cover him. Charlie never finds out what Munro said to make everyone wait that long under the sound of an honest to god gunfire storm, nor does he ever discover precisely how a drug cartel is this bad at shooting because somehow he's still alive for the delayed backup to make any difference at all.

Charlie's never actually been shot before, but he's starting to slowly suspect it's rather more than a flesh wound around the time Munro storms up to his slumped figure huddling gingerly on the police car's runner board, a steady pool of red colouring the black matte a tacky shade of burgundy.

Charlie wasn't exactly expecting a pat on the head, but Munro's abrupt drag to standing and growled "What the hell are you doing Davis!" is almost completely out of character for the man. It's almost Hobart-esque, and Charlie suspects he should be a lot less amused, and a lot more frightened. Maybe it's the blood loss. Regardless, he doubts the slight smile he inadvertently presents to Munro's scowl helps the situation. Whatever that is precisely.

"Stay behind and document the scene Sergeant." The order is spoken in Munro's familiar soft tones, something which goes a surprisingly long way to softening Charlie's acknowledgement of the sheer madness of it. The puddle at their feet is slowly turning red, and Charlie isn't entirely sure how he hasn't fainted yet, but even he has his limits.

He opens his mouth to outline them, before shutting it abruptly with a near audible click as Munro calmly taps his breast pocket once, twice, slowly and deliberately. The breast pocket where all of Blake's letters to his daughter are securely wrapped in damning black thread. Letters that are written in Chinese and that's all that will ever matter to anyone in Melbourne.

Charlie documents the scene. He's not sure what happens to his notes, which are surprisingly free of blood and dirt. He's kinda proud of that.

It takes him nearly two hours to finish. He's only alone for the last hour, the hour that it rains so hard even his jacket becomes free of any traces of red. The rain gets heavier right around the time Charlie realizes the others didn't leave him with a car.

It takes him a further hour to stumble back to Blake's porch. The silence of the house is almost more painful than the bullet was, partly because he's too tired to remember where everyone is. Charlie makes it all the way to his bed before he collapses, clothes and all. He's rather less proud of that.

His last thought before drifting off is to wonder when Munro became powerful enough to control even the bloody weather.

CD

Blake later tells Charlie that roughly eighteen hours passed between the moment Munro ordered him to walk into the lion's den virtually defenseless and the moment Blake literally falls into his room, his door creaking on unsteady hinges, to find Charlie a bloody but somehow conscious mess on Mrs. Beazley's newly cleaned sheets.

Eighteen hours in which Blake nearly got arrested driving like a maniac from the wild goose chase Munro sent him off on back to his own house, one anonymous phone call that was more taunting gloating than genuine concern but made all the difference none the less. That made it eighteen hours instead of thirty. That stopped Charlie from bleeding out completely.

Blake tells Charlie later that the bullet severed more nerves than arteries, which was bad in the long run but ultimately saved his life long enough for Blake to save what was left of him.

"Lay still Charlie, there's a good boy, don't move too much for me, that's it." Charlie's always known Blake was a damned good doctor, never more so than the moments the man spends bent over his bed turning his best shirt into a makeshift splint, has always known that he would help anyone in need, even Hobart he's sure, but somehow the glimpse he catches of Blake's face the instant between the man's deft fingers leaving an arm he can no longer really feel to slip firmly under his back and legs still makes his heart leap.

Because, Charlie thinks with a secretive smile as he carefully tilts his head to rest on Blake's broad and steady shoulder, as he allows the rolling gait of the man's only slightly laboured walk to lull him into beckoning slumber, the look Blake just gave him was anything but bland.

CD

Eighteen hours of exposure to dirty rain water was still more than enough time for the seeds of infection to set in with a vengeance, and for all the Doc's increasingly invasive and painlessly aggressive attempts, Charlie rising fever is matched only by Blake's rising anger in its ravagement of their little family.

As grateful as he is for the Ballarat's hospital staff for their complete lack of argument about his assuming complete control of Charlie's treatment, their quick acquiescence does nothing to raise Blake's confidence in their competency.

Charlie remains unconscious for the entire week his fever rages, so deep they fear coma a time or too, mostly when even the ice they risk on the second day fails to rouse any sort of reaction.

Blake has Lawson call Charlie's mother that night. Charlie was unconscious when Lawson burst through his hospital room door hours after his admittance, startling Blake out of an uneasy sleep.

His sister arrives alone later that week.

Charlie is unconscious when Munro is suspended on charges of suspected corruption.

He is unconscious when Lawson is temporarily reinstated and promptly fires his entire staff, excluding Hobart, who he takes great pleasure in arresting over his loud protests about phone calls and promised immunity.

He is still unconscious when Jean gives up attempting to convince Lucien to go home for a while and calmly sits down at the man's side, pulling out a ball of wool and resolutely ignoring the look of incredulous fondness blossoming across the Doc's bearded visage.

He is unconscious when his little sister collapses into tears into Blake's arms, unconscious when Blake replaces a hanging telephone receiver in the hall in a new hatred of a woman he now hopes he never meets.

Charlie is still unconscious when Blake has to make the decision to remove most of his right arm, nearly six days after he was shot. He is unconscious when Blake performs his second surgery since the end of the war.

He is unconscious when the Doc stays at his bedside in the hours afterwards, staring at the empty white space where Charlie's right arm used to be with a fixed guilt that only a sober man can feel.

He's unconscious when his fever breaks nearly a day after the surgery.

He's unconscious when Mattie narrowly escapes being arrested for slapping out his little sister, his little sister who leaves as quietly as she arrived on the arm of her fiancé, tears etching near permanent marks through her careful make-up.

Charlie opens his eyes on the eighth day to the sight of Blake staring fixedly at his pristine hands. He falls back to sleep before he can ask what the Doc was really seeing.

CD

"Charlie, it's half-three in the afternoon. Don't you think you out to be thinking about getting up sometime today?" Charlie refrains from pointing out that if it's half-three, it won't really be today for all that much longer. He refrains from pointing out pretty much anything these days.

It's been six weeks since Charlie woke up that first time, five since he was aware enough to fully register that the numbness on his right side was accompanied by a distinct lack where an arm used to be. Four since he said anything, since he told Blake to go "fuck himself" and promptly turned his head to the wall and stopped talking.

It's been four weeks since Blake sat on the edge of Charlie's hospital cot and flatly informed the back of his head that he wasn't going anywhere, so Charlie might as well get used to it.

Three weeks since the Doc finally left his semi-permanent residence in Ballarat hospital, and proved his point by taking Charlie with him, literally caring him over the threshold of the Doc's house like a blushing bride. Or a cripple.

Charlie thinks he should have objected, but he's not talking to anyone anymore, so he doesn't.

Blake puts Charlie in his study initially, which lasts the additional week it takes Charlie to navigate walking on still weak legs and the surprisingly hard activity of balancing with only one arm instead of two. Blake watches him stumble around the room for nearly an hour before he makes him sit down for a moment, but doesn't raise a hand to help otherwise.

Charlie retreats to his room that night. He hasn't left it since. He only sees Blake when it's time to change his dressings, a task that is equal parts silent and painless, nerve damage making it sometimes feel like Blake took a lot more than three quarters of his arm on that theatre table.

Blake never smells like alcohol these days, but Charlie thinks sometimes at night he can hear the clink of bottles coming from the direction of the Doc's studio.

Mrs. Beazley attempts to get Charlie up every morning since then, giving up after a rather perfunctorily single attempt and bringing him breakfast. She stays until he eats everything on his plate, however long it takes. She always brings him things that can be eaten with fingers, easy things, but she ends up having to help him more days than not. She never looks at the space where his arm used to be.

Mattie avoids his room like the plague for those two weeks, which makes this attempt to breach his self-imposed exile of silence all the more startling.

"Munro's trial starts tomorrow." Charlie manages to maintain his careful examination of his remaining five nails, but it's a close thing. "Lucien isn't going, he says someone needs to stay and watch you."

Charlie's head snaps up abruptly, a frown beginning to mar his face. It's frozen mid-spread by Mattie's self-satisfied smirk. Checkmate.

Charlie throws his pillow at her head. It lays on the floor by the door for nearly three hours before he finally levers himself off the bed to retrieve it. He glances up from the floor to find Blake watching him intently from the studio doorway, an empty glass of whiskey hanging limply from his right hand.

He hesitates for only a moment. "Can I have one of those Doc?"

His voice cracks more than slightly on more than every second word, but it's a start.

Blake gives him hot chocolate instead, wrapping his own fingers over Charlie's remaining hand to prevent him from burning himself on the cup's shaky path to his parched lips. Charlie squeezes his thumb against the Doc's hard enough to turn both their fingers white. The Doc squeezes back with equal intensity.

It's not much, but it's a start.

CD

Charlie's father came back from the war slightly different. Slightly off somehow. Charlie was young enough to only barely remember his father from before Hitler invaded Poland, but he remembers just enough to impart a single, shattering pearl of wisdom to his sister the one time she asks, freshly six and precocious beyond his mother's ability to handle.

"Daddy screamed a lot less." It's a long time before Charlie realizes quite how cruel a thing to say it was.

His father stops sleeping at home three weeks before he walks out of their lives for good. It's just close enough to Charlie's discussion with his sister for him to always wonder, just a little, if his father walking out is as much his fault as his mother always says it was.

CD

"Charlie, wake up!" Everything is shaking, his bed feels like an earthquake is occurring under the mattress. Charlie's mind conjures up a rather cartoonish image of Blake fishing him single-handedly from a yawning chasm of reddish brown earth. Some blurry, half-awake corner of his mind vaguely registers that's probably the morphine talking.

Charlie had his first nightmare the night after Munro's trial concluded with a slap on the wrist due to lack of evidence. Charlie hadn't been at the verdict, Blake still refusing to allow him so much as past the front porch. Lawson stopped for tea, and for all that everyone knew why he was there, it took him an hour break the news.

Blake broke his best china cup cleanly in two. Charlie calmly took another biscuit from the tray placed carefully by his left hand.

He wakes the entire house promptly at 3am with screams loud enough to send Blake into a flashback. Even half out of his mind, Charlie can't fail to notice the rather glazed look in the Doc's eyes as he efficiently administers a hefty shot of morphine into what's left of Charlie's shoulder.

Charlie squeezes his eyes shut against the burn and presses his clenched face resolutely into Blake's waistcoat clad shoulder.

"Charlie, come on, match my breathing, there's a good boy." Charlie snaps his eyes open so fast a stab of agony burns across his retinas despite the deliberate ambiance of candlelight. The Doc's face hovers the usual six inches from his own, his eyes oddly resembling cools of liquid emotion.

The Doc's never said the words "phantom pain" but Charlie grew up in a time where guys with a few less limbs was depressingly commonplace, so he kinda doesn't have to. Charlie never asks for more morphine. Part of him knows he's already on the maximum safe dose anyway.

It never really helps.

Charlie stares at the buttons on Blake's waistcoat with dead eyes. He pretends he doesn't feel the Doc's careful fingers brushing moisture from his cheeks.

Sometimes, if Charlie squeezes his eyes shut and thinks really, really hard, he can almost pretend he still has two arms too.

CD

There's nothing quite as distinctive as the sound of a gun hitting carved wood. Apparently Lugers are no different in this respect. Charlie doesn't so much as glance up from the book perched carefully in his lap.

"Mrs. Beazley will be mad." She's been telling Charlie to call her Jean since he was shot, but he's still not quite sure enough whether the sentiment is more parts care than pity, so Mrs. Beazley it remains.

"Charlie, put the book down and pick up the damn gun will you." Charlie's never met anyone who could manage to sound equal parts abrasive, scoffing, caring and loving as Blake does pretty much all the time. He sometimes thinks he could drown in that tone.

"I can't shoot Doc." Charlie has always been told he's brutally honest at the best of times, but Lawson reliably informs him he's become positively rudely blunt since the Shooting. That's what they call it, capital and all, as if there's never been another gun related crime in all of Australia.

Charlie's gaze is ripped from his book slightly at Blake's quiet chuckle, another sound he never hears enough these days, but his eyes never quite make it as far as the Doc's semi-perched position an inch from his right side. Only Blake's allowed near that side of Charlie these days, and the man flaunts that right with impunity. Charlie can never quite bring himself to mind.

"That's your father's gun." Charlie knows he sound more than a little awed, and he is, because it really is, a 1900 luger pistol, with slight scratches at the barrel. The Doc keeps it behind actual glass in his bedroom. It's one of the only things of the Doc's father that he seems to really care about anymore. Charlie's never seen him so much as handle it before, let alone attempt to scratch his favourite reading table with it.

"It is indeed Charlie, well spotted." Mattie asks Charlie routinely why he's more comfortable with Blake now, after everything, than he is with pretty much everyone else. He supposes it's a more than fair question, but really, it she'd been paying any attention, the answer is as plain as day for all to hear.

Charlie slowly raises his eyes to meet Lucien's challenging half-smirk. He doesn't break the contact for a moment as his hand slowly slides across the desk to caress the barrel of the pistol laid out between them. He only fumbles it twice before he manages an awkward but rather firm grip.

CD

Charlie learned to shoot the way most Melbourne boys did, milk bottles in a back alley after school. He was always rather a good shot. He was also right handed.

Blake's also right handed, but apparently he's also ambidextrous or something, because his shooting makes Charlie's best record look like a joke. And he wasn't half bad back then, he doesn't mind telling you.

Charlie stares mutely at the painted circle of cloth covered hay set a fairly respectable distance away from their position at the end of the garden. The hole in the bullseye glows a blinding gold in the late afternoon sun. It will be spring soon, a distinctive chill still in the air, but neither of them are wearing coats.

Charlie lopped all the arms off his coats as soon as he was able to get his remaining fingers around scissors. Mrs. Beazley's still trying to salvageable something useable out of what was left.

Charlie only stumbles slightly when Blake passes over the priceless pistol, partly because he refused to eat lunch and the Doc stopped force feeding him around the time he started eating just enough to stop losing weight.

Blake's dominant arm wraps around his shoulders securely, too familiar to feel like a vice anymore. The Doc's left hand slowly closes over Charlie's, bending their arms up towards the target. They breathe in together slowly.

Charlie squeezes the trigger by himself.

He just has time in the second before a new hole rips into the straw an inch from its predecessor to wonder if this is what if might have felt like to have his father teach him how to shoot.

CD

They're in the kitchen, Mrs. Beazley experimenting with a new seasoning just complicated enough to give Charlie enough time to finish preparing the potatoes. It takes him roughly three times longer than it used to, but they taste just as good so he isn't going to make a big deal if nobody else doesn't. So far, nobody has.

Soft foot falls herald the Doc's habitual arrival at his usual place propping up the doorway. Charlie sometimes wonders if the man has a sixth-sense for potato chopping. Charlie glances up from his rather laborious task just in time to drop the lemon he's holding in shock. The Doc spends almost as much time in the kitchen as Charlie and Mrs. Beazley do, but he's never once seen the man so much as pick up a kitchen implement more complicated than a tea spoon.

Still, it's almost amusing that Blake's more hopeless with a potato peeler than even he is these days.

It takes around three minutes for Mrs. Beazley to kick them both out of the kitchen, which is a new record actually, but Charlie glances back over his shoulder as the Doc steers him by the wrist into the den and just catches a twitch of their housekeeper's lips as Lucien starts whistling Bach over Charlie's groan.

One handed piano is surprisingly easy when the Doc provides the other half of the melody, and while Charlie suspects they could make it as a sideshow act somewhere, his typing speed has made it up to nearly thirty words per minute, so he largely keeps his mouth shut.

Charlie lets Mrs. Beazley take his plate that night at dinner without his usual fuss, an effect that is largely ruined by the resounding crash of breaking china that follows his soft "Thank you Jean."

CD

He's in the middle of beating Mattie at checkers when Lawson bursts into the den, startling Blake out a light doze induced no doubt by Jean's excellent cooking combined with the resolute clicking of her ever-present evening knitting.

Charlie's slightly ashamed to admit that it took him until barely a week earlier to notice that Blake has stopped drinking, pretty much entirely.

"Matthew, what on earth's the matter?" Lawson barely lets the Doc finish rising from his chair before he crashes his news into the end of Blake's question.

"Munro's dead."

Charlie kinda wishes they still had alcohol in the house.

CD

Nobody is more startled than Charlie to learn than William Munro shot himself in the head, nearly six months after he attempted to murder his best friend's only son.

They find a copy of a death certificate for one Hugh Miles Davis clenched in Munro's right hand. He wasn't left handed.

Charlie badgers Blake into taking him to the funeral. Nobody cries.

They bury him next to Charlie's father. He isn't sure which of the men he's doing it for. He isn't sure he's doing it for either one really.

Blake's hand doesn't leave his right shoulder for the entire thirty minute ceremony. The heavy, steady weight makes turning away from the fresh mounds of dirt surprisingly easy.

His sister didn't come.

CD

They play chess most nights, starting around two in the morning and going until Charlie eventually falls back to sleep, the board balanced carefully on the Doc's desk. Charlie spends enough nights on the Doc's couch that Jean eventually stops changing his bedspread regularly, but he gets enough sleep to function most days, so nobody really says anything about it.

Charlie puts himself to bed the night of the funeral, hours after waking up to his own habitual screaming. It's nearly six in the morning when the Doc drifts off to sleep, nodding gently against the white side of the board, and Charlie pauses long enough to carefully drape a blanket across his chest, pressing the body-warm object he's been carrying in his pocket all day carefully into Blake's right hand before swaying slowly towards the couch.

He sleeps the most soundly he has in years.

CD

They bury Charlie Davis' father on September 6th, seven months after his son lost an arm to his father's best friend.

Charlie goes back to work the next day.

CD

When Charlie is sixteen, he spends his first real paycheck on a simple, unadorned hip flask for his father. A father who disappears out of his life at the end of August, along with the remains of Charlie's tattered boyhood. Charlie never had a chance to give him the flask.

CD

When Charlie is twenty-six, he wakes up from a slightly tamer than usual nightmare to find Lucien Blake carefully pressing the edge of a plain, unadorned flask to his parched, cracking lips.

The room's single candle is guttering low with the earliness of the hour, but its dying embers are just bright enough to catch the faintest glint of scratched metal.

The message is no less simple and childish now than it was ten years ago. Nor is it any less meaningful. Or any less true

 _Love You Dad. Your son, Charlie._


End file.
